


An Odd Sadness

by PineTrain



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Adult Dipper Pines, Angst, Elementary School, Only child mabel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 20:22:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13934676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PineTrain/pseuds/PineTrain





	An Odd Sadness

Mabel hummed to herself idly as she watched small clouds drift in the sky. They weren’t really big enough to see as birds or butterflies or ICBMs or whatever, so instead she imagined such things making their way between them as if it were a very large maze with very few obstacles. While normally something she enjoyed, it was, unfortunately, the only activity to occupy her mind at the moment and she wasn’t having a lot of fun because of that fact. **  
**

“MABEL!”

Her attention shot down to the elderly woman who’d just called her name. The distance had made it a fairly quiet sound, but Mabel was quite familiar with the sharp edge it carried whatever the volume, having heard the same thing many, many times back in 1st grade. Indeed, it was familiar enough that she knew before she even looked down that the harshness was not actually aimed at her.

She cocked her head as she watched Mrs. Lee berate Mrs. Kelly from her perch. She glanced down at the climbing toy, musing on how high it appeared to her from where she sat. Mabel suspected that the grown-ups didn’t see it quite the same as she did since they were taller, so she didn’t fully understand why Mrs. Lee was annoyed with Mrs. Kelly.

“Heavens, child!” Mrs. Lee exclaimed as she marched over. “How long have you been up there?”

“Dunno,” Mabel shrugged, “Whenever the other last kid left. I’m okay up here.” She hoped the last part would make Mrs. Lee less angry at Mrs. Kelly.

Mrs. Lee frowned, though. “That’s what I was afraid of…” Mabel heard her mutter quietly as she began making her way down. She reached the ground and turned to her former teacher with a bright smile, still worried Mrs. Lee was angry after what she just said. “Come along, now,” was all the woman said, making Mabel uncertain.

Mrs. Kelly stood at the door and opened it for them looking sad or something like it. Mabel wanted to cheer her up, so she reached into her skirt’s secret stash and quickly slapped a sticker to the woman’s leg as she passed her. Turning back with a quick grin, Mabel shot her a thumbs up and Mrs. Kelly smiled in a nice way.

But not completely nice… It wasn’t very obvious, but there was something sad in her smile. Mabel glanced at the backside of Mrs. Lee as she followed her. There was something sad about the way she had spoken, too, when she had called Mabel down. It was weird, because it wasn’t the kind of sadness Mabel understood, like when something bad happens. It was similar, but she wasn’t sure how, since it felt so much smaller than when people were normally sad. If nothing had happened, why would they be sad?

Mrs. Lee opened the door to the gym and Mabel followed her in. It was almost entirely empty, the other after-school students all picked up by their parents. The only people were the other Misters and Misses who took care of her and the other kids. She knew them all, obviously, but Mabel wasn’t quite as concerned about them as she was the cabinets at the side of the room.

“Mr. Mason!” she cried, running over to them.

“Whooooaaaa!” he responded, catching her flying leap and spinning her around several times before setting her down. “Careful!”

“I’m always careful!” Mabel said, crossing her arms defiantly. She stomped a foot down for emphasis and it landed crooked as it hit a LEGO at just the right angle to break her stance.

Mr. Mason caught her shoulder, stopping her fall. “Right,” he said.

“Being sarcastic is mean!” she exclaimed.

“You know what ‘sarcastic’ means?” Mr. Mason asked, looking surprised.

Mabel puffed her chest out. “Of course I do! I heard you use it and I looked it up!” She shifted her hips, cocking her head thoughtfully. “You’re sarcastic a lot, Mr. Mason.”

“Uh…”

“That makes you mean,” Mabel said judgmentally. She added a glare for good measure.

“I, well, just cause…” Mr. Mason said, rubbing his hair nervously.

Mabel giggled. “It’s okay! I’m just joking! You look funny!”

“Yeah, whatever,” Mr. Mason said, picking up a LEGO and tossing it at her head. She giggled some more. “Anyways, I couldn’t find the, er, ‘little-me’.” He gestured to the cabinet.

Mabel smiled, another giggle humming in her throat with superiority. “That’s because he’s not in there!”

Mr. Mason glanced at the cabinet, then back at her. “I put these away after you went home yesterday. Then I locked it.”

Mabel just giggled some more.

“Uh, right. Well, I won’t ask any more questions about illicit activities,” Mabel made a mental note to look up ‘illicit’, “but where is he? I mean, me?”

“Here!” Mabel exclaimed, dropping down and reaching into her shoe. A puff of glitter came with the toy as she extracted it.

“Whoa! What the-” Mr. Mason said, shocked as she held it towards him. “Oh, um, is, is that the big dipper?” he asked, referring to the dots she had drawn with marker on the small figure. It’d been hard to do on the tiny canvas, but she persevered.

“Yup!” Mabel said with a widening smile. “Just like your forehead!”

Mr. Mason touched the toy, then his forehead. “Huh, well, I guess he really is me now, isn’t he?”

“Yup yup!” Mabel said even more gleefully. “And, and, I, um!” She found it hard to say, excitement growing inside her. “I thought we could call him Dipper! Like, like, because it’s the big dipper! Like a nickname!”

“Oh! Ha!” Mr Mason laughed. “That’s clever! Does that mean you’re going to call me Dipper now, too?”

“Um,” Mabel blushed, “No, cause you’re not my big brother, but he is.”

Mr. Mason didn’t say anything. Mabel looked at him and knew she’d said the wrong thing. She didn’t want to lie to him, so she’d tried to say it the best way she knew how. He wasn’t her big brother, even if she wanted him to be. He could be, though, when they pretended, when they played with LEGOs while she waited for her parents to pick her up long after all the other children were gone. LEGO Dipper and LEGO Mabel, brother and sister going on adventures together in whatever LEGOland they constructed with their imaginations. But that’s all it was, imagination, so it’d be a lie to call him big brother.

Now he had that same odd sadness in his face that Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Lee had. It seemed more intense though. Mabel couldn’t say how, since she didn’t understand what any of them were exactly sad about. She did feel like there was something more painful about seeing it in him than the others. A little sister upset that her brother was sad, she liked to think.

Mr. Mason turned his head towards the door opposite the one she’d entered the gym from, the one where her mom or dad would come in to pick her up. There was a large clock by it, visible throughout the huge, empty room. Mabel still had some trouble reading clocks with hands, but she did know that the closer the short one got to the bottom, the longer she’d been there. On the days Mr. Mason wasn’t around, she often looked in that direction, impatient and lonely, watching the short hand move lower and lower.

She reached her hand into her other shoe, pulling out the other figure she’d drawn on with marker. Mabel grimaced at the shooting star, not liking how Mr. Mason was reacting to her words. The star was a connection between them, but a short one they only had in the after-school program. She’d felt really smart thinking of that, but if it bothered him that LEGO Dipper was her “brother” then she probably shouldn’t push things any further. Licking her thumb, she roughly rubbed the plastic until the symbol was gone.

“Hey Dipper!” she said in a goofy voice. “What’s that over there?!”

Mr. Mason turned back to look at her, then at the figure in her hand as she trotted it along. “Oh. I mean, ‘Oh!’” he said, switching to his own goofy voice. “I dunno Mabel! Let’s go see!”

He moved his own along with hers and Mabel sensed him growing a happier as they played. While he broke character for a minute to construct something, she looked over at the clock. The short hand was moving low. She felt her own odd sadness, different from the adults’, but somehow very similar. She didn’t understand how that worked, but she doubted she wanted to know why. She preferred to think about Mr. Mason as her big brother who played with her when no one else would.


End file.
